As organizations invest time and resources to deploy the various NIST cybersecurity framework (CSF) components within their organization, equally important is the decision to either hire internet security operations (SecOpS) engineers or partner with a managed detection and response (MDR) providers like ForeNova.
ForeNova, a global MDR provider, understands its clients' challenges when maintaining their current NIST CSF deployments, incident response activities, and threat modeling. MDR providers like ForeNova offer a variety of coverage models, including 24x7 support, after-hours coverage, and staff augmentation.
Are you considering an NIST CSF deployment and need help with post-security operations? Make ForeNova is your MDR partner of choice.
“The NIST CSF was first released in 2014 to help organizations improve cybersecurity. The first major update, Version 2.0, was released in 2024.”
“The updates in NIST CSF 2.0 incorporate user feedback and aim to reflect the current cybersecurity environment more effectively.” The framework addresses unknown risks and technologies to maintain the framework's importance, effectiveness, and ability to help organizations improve their cybersecurity posture.
Managed detection and response (MDR) are a service offered by cybersecurity providers. These providers help organizations address the shortcomings in staffing incident response SecOps function. MDR providers handle incident response, threat modeling, cybersecurity incident case management, and post-remediation services.
Leveraging an MDR, SMEs gain access to experienced SecOps resources and experience supporting EU members to help with incident response and reporting. Along with access to experienced SecOps talent, SMEs can now align their internal resources to look ahead to other elements of NIST frameworks become deployed to address future risks to their organization. MDR helps provide sustainability of investments made by the SMEs by supporting day-to-day service operations at a much lower cost.
GDPR in the EU requires strict rules for privacy and personal data protection. Organizations can use NIST 800-53 controls to meet GDPR security requirements like access control, encryption, incident response, and data breach notifications.
Experienced MDR providers like ForeNova continuously add additional detection monitoring and response to help protect their clients and stay ahead of next-generation attacks. These extra tools include adopting extended detection and response (XDR). XDR captured security telemetry from all cybersecurity collection points, including network, endpoints, applications, identity management platforms, SD-WAN, SASE, and virtualization hosts.
XDR collects this telemetry and processes the data through large language models (LLMs). However, deploying an XDR solution and maintaining this capability is expensive. MDR providers like ForeNova offer managed XDR solutions for organizations deploying several detection technologies.
Improved Incident Response
Scaling incident response, especially with the rise in adversarial AI attacks, compels organizations to hire additional SecOps engineers or partner with an MDR provider like ForeNova. Enabling additional resources is only one part of the puzzle. Automation is another critical component within the new realm of incident response. With the increase in the velocity of attacks from hackers investing in AL and ML, automation is the foundation component to help respond to attacks well beyond what engineers are capable of.
ForeNova's expertise in incident response automation within its MDR offering helps keep its clients secure even with increased attack velocity.
Organizations investing in digital transformation strategies expect these new capabilities to produce a lower operating cost, faster time-to-market for their solutions and services, and a better customer success experience for their clients. Cybersecurity attacks cause these expected business outcomes to become less realized.
Along with ensuring incident response, the SecOps strategy integrates automation needs to include continuous monitoring and compliance reporting. Monitoring new infrastructures supporting digital transformation initiatives is critical for organizations to realize their expected gains. The value gained by integrating cybersecurity protection layers within the transformation solutions is essential to the survivability of the investment.
Continuous monitoring requires resources like those within other cybersecurity protection layers. Organizations needing additional resources to handle this function become strong candidates for a managed services engagement. A critical part of ForeNova's MDR services includes 24/7 monitoring of all endpoints, hosts, network devices, and cloud virtual instances.
The NIST framework is complex and overwhelming, particularly for those without expertise in cybersecurity. To make it easier to apply controls, NIST created an extensive resource library for companies aiming to enhance their cyber resilience.
MDR solutions help organizations support NIST CSF requirements and maintain security controls. These managed solutions play a significant role in cybersecurity strategies by assisting organizations with the enablement of the correct NIST CSF framework domains. There is a 100’s of functions, controls, and processes with NIST. MDR providers assist the client in aligning the correct domain and control needed to protect their environment and the most optimal MDR service.
“NIST collaborates with international standards-developing organizations to promote consistent approaches that other countries and international entities have adopted. NIST has also translated the CSF into many languages.”
NIST 800-53 Revision 5 recently introduced a new control family focused on supply chain risk management (SCRM). Due to various federal requirements and industry-specific regulations, SCRM has become a significant topic for many federal government IT leaders.
NIST has several frameworks, domains, and standards for organizations. Six different yet integrated domains help organizations become more resilient to cyberattacks.
Identify the various security risks within the organization. It is critical to determine the level of priority and type of architecture that should be deployed to help reduce the risk.
Enable the recommended cybersecurity protection architectures to help reduce the identified risk.
Enable endpoint, network, and host-based detection capabilities to ensure all security breach attempts become discovered.
After detecting a security attack, the organization needs to respond with prevention tools, threat analysis, and notification capabilities—the development and staffing for incident response are critical to all organizations.
Once an organization has suffered a cybersecurity breach, processes, and procedures must be implemented to manage the post-attack recovery process, including lessons learned, remediation, and engaging third-party assessment teams to validate that all post-recovery efforts have resolved known vulnerabilities and possible future exploits.
Organizations mandated by compliance regulations leverage NIST CSF components to help meet these obligations. Developing and enabling to support the compliance and privacy mandates requires the board of directors' leadership and financial support.
Without executive oversight and funding, most NIST frameworks lack ongoing investment into human capital to sustain compliance regulations.
Enabling NIST frameworks and standards is an essential step for organizations. However, enabling is only one part of the strategy. Ongoing SecOps processes, procedures, and maintenance of the NIST investment are critical to the organization's success.
MDR services from ForeNova deliver an exceptional, cost-effective model to help you meet your monitoring, incident response, and reporting requirements.
Contact our NIST MDR specialist today to discuss your needs for managed services.